This is going to be a really funny story.. .Years from now.
Not now
Years from now this is going to be a really funny story about the year I FORGOT THE PRESENTS.
I'll be able to relate how I got all the way through to Glasgow, took the food for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and Boxing Day, packed enough clothes and  remembered walking stuff for the hike we're going on, remembered best dress, remembered drugs, remembered pots and pans and even remembered the wii so we could set the Aged Mother up with the BBC iPlayer.
Then I woke up on Christmas Day, sat down with a coffee ready to open presents.
And noticed....
Big Oops

Then I'll tell how I drove all the way back over to Edinburgh .......

The Proclaimers seem strangely appropriate now...and no.  I have no idea what the video's about....you just make up your own storyline now whiles I drive another 70 miles BACK through to North of Glasgow....

It's Christmas! It's bloody Christmas already! How did that happen?
If Christmas was a giant juggernaut, forget about it coming towards me - it'd be there, there already; numberplate pressing down on my forehead There Already.

Carrying on this metaphorical cul de sac - I'm Christmas Roadkill.

There's a box of Christmas decorations that aren't going to get put up this side of Summer2012. The list of Christmas cards unsent is longer that list of cards signed, sealed and posted.
I have already resorted to wrapping presents in paper, any paper, whatever I can find under the stairs paper.
I have no idea what I'm wearing tomorrow, tomorrow night, or even, if  whatever it is is clean. Which is a problem, because I need to pack it in another ten minutes.

I could blame work; there's always too much of it for accountants at Year End. Yadda yadda yadda.
If you want it straight though, some years it just seems to get harder.
You know you're in trouble when the last verse of the Pogues gets you.

Hell, it'll be better next year.  I'll be better next year! Roll on 2012!
Meanwhiles here's the Pogues.
And here's to you too - Merry Christmas 2011!


 Tissues at the ready now....

We heard it first from wee Sean Batty on the STV news. There was going to be a storm.  In particular there was a storm warning over the whole of Scotland, but Code Red over central Scotland. Code Red means that there will be winds of over 80mph, and that there is a very clear danger of structural damage to buildings - not to mention any people around them.

Cheesetown is in Central Scotland.

Throughout Tuesday the Met Office and Metcheck and the real weather forecaster, the one with the English accent on the BBC confirmed that Sean was not winding us up; central Scotland was in for a storm of epic proportions on Thursday.
Sigh... why haven't I emigrated yet?

Trouble is, although our weather forecasters could agree what code red meant, no one in charge could seem to agree what this meant we should do.

Half of Cheesetown assumed that police warnings to stay off the roads after 3pm, meant they should stay at home all day.  The schools announced they were closing at noon.  Network Rail was cancelling trains faster than the information boards could signal the news. But my office was OPEN. 

The Institutes's adverse weather policy can be summed up as "Go home in the full knowledge that we disapprove and might not pay you later".This policy was self evidently not working. The Institute might have had a full house of staff, but no one was working.  The Great Snow Disaster of last year is still fresh in our collective memory.  We all know people who spent the night in cars in the snow, or six hours getting home in snowstorms (me).

Fool me once.... We were keeping an eye on updates from the Met Office and Scot Rail, we were texting friends and family to check they were OK and could pick the kids up from school, we were complaining about our uncaring employer; one thing the staff at the EERIE were definitely not doing was working.
At 11am Senior Management gave up.
We could go home as long as we took work with us and worked from home.

And so it was that Code Red for me meant I got to sit for two hours in a bus out of Edinburgh and reflect that any severe weather seems to result in me sitting for hours in a traffic jamout through Corstorphine. This is not how Code Red storms are shown in movies.



Oh yeah.. and today it snowed!

We live in exciting times. We live in times when Pandas are moving into Edinburgh. We live in times when man has finally figured out how to stop painting the Forth Bridge.
And we live in times when, simply through losing his father to cancer, the Cherub will find himself eligible to attend Hogwarts Academy.
Or at least a Hogwarts lookalike academy - if he wants to.

Did you spot the catch there? Yes. I've promised him that he doesn't have to go if he doesn't want to.

And to decide if he wants to go or not, he was to attend for one day.

For one day he was to get to sit in on classes and mix with his future class mates and enjoy some of the finest education money can (allegedly) buy.

And so it was that this morning I left him in the cloisters outside the school office with two of his potential classmates.  The snow swirling around the quadrangle, his future schoolmaster greeting him by name.
Cheesetown High School it was not.
Cheesetown High School does not have a quadrangle or gargoyles or paving stones.
Cheesetown High School does not have a view of the Castle
Cheesetown High School  does what it does, but it doesn't lay claim to producing well rounded invididuals to the highest posible standards.

Ah had ma hopes


And so it was this afternoon that I collected the cherub. And we have a verdict. We have a verdict on a day of public school education in one of Edinburgh's oldest academies.

Meh.

I'm working on a translation of this...